A Cornish tin mine hopes to be producing hundreds of kilos of valuable indium – used in iPads and other devices and costing up to £500 a kilo.
The primary provider of the substance is Canada, where indium is associated with zinc mining. It used to be used for high performance metal bearings in aircraft but is now mostly used …

They...

Not enough information

"Each kilo is worth about £500 and we estimate we will mine between 250,000 to 400,000 tonnes per year [of the raw ore used to produce indium] in the first phase."

I guess 1 kilo(gramme?) of indium is worth 500 quid, not 1kg raw ore. But, how much Cornish ore is needed to produce 1 kg indium? Depending on the answer the £500 could be less attractive than it appears now...

I was thinking the same thing

It's a byproduct

The indium will be a byproduct of cassiterite mining. Tin will make or break the mine, and prices for that have rocketed of late, so the indium is very much the icing on the cake. It's a long time since I did the geology of South Crofty but they may also extract small amounts of copper, silver and tungsten alongside tin.

Wouldn't be the first time they went back to the tips

During the late part of World War I many Cornish tips were mined for wolframite as Allied gunmakers tried to compete with the super-hard tungsten alloys being used in German guns. Cornish miners had known about wolframite for decades and loathed the stuff because it was hard to separate from cassiterite (tin oxide) and was impossible to smelt. So when they found it, they dumped it.

But some of this is hardly news, silver and gold were regularly recovered from Cornish mines. Indium is news (if only because industrial uses only came along after the heyday of the mines) - but in retrospect not that surprising, it's much quicker to list the elements that can't be found in Cornish ores, AFAIK it is still the most mineralogically diverse region in the World.

[Sighs fondly thinking of all those hazy summer days spent looking for uranium minerals]

Doesn't have a good ring to it...

What about the Cowboydiums?

So - I guess the question would be.

How much Iridium do they get from that quantity of ore? obviously it must be worth their while, and if they are mining it anyway (to get the tin I guess) then they may as well see what else is in there.

Duelling banjos...

Had to be said ....

It will available drekkly

You'll probably find that it's not "in them thar hills" but instead in that big hole in the ground. Most of the mine is under the sea, so it floods, and requires constant pumping to drain it. They've been working on this for about a year, and still have another to go before they can really start to look at mining anything.

For reference, you'll often hear the phrase "Cornishmen do it drekkly" - (Drekkly = "directly"). It's a bit like the Spanish word "Mañana" - only it doesn't convey quite the same sense of urgency!

Wheal Jane under the sea? Shirley Some Mistake

Whilst true of Geevor (my first place of employement) and various other mines, Both South Crofty and Wheal Jane are firmly under land not sea... However, a lot of deposites ran to the sea in the form of waste water / sludge.

This is a good link http://www2.brgm.fr/mineo/SiteReport/UK_site_report.pdf

Ooh er Missus!

China secures rare minerals !

The UK Government announced yesterday that it has sold all rights to Cornwall to the People's Republic of China.

Under Junior Flunky for International Affairs, Milton Honkworthy-Moffert (DAM, WHooPS) announced in a press conference that all residents of Cornwall, were to have their British Citizenship revoked and would become "proud citizens the PRC".

The Dutchess of Cornwall, and the Prince of Wales, are considering relocating to Devon.

The position of Lands End, the most westerly point of the British Mainland is apparently also being renegotiated.

Surely that should be iNdium....

Most drill rigs are controlled and powered by hydraulics. Usually by someone standing there and pulling levers, turning knobs and being in control of the actual drilling process.

Computer control may mean that computers control the entire process including adding the drill rods and performing the drilling. It could also mean that the drill rig is moved under computer control to each drill location (pre-programmed) in sequence to perform the aforementioned drilling.

Strange that Wikipedia doesn't have any info on them (just checked) - they've been around since the early 1990's

Great wit

South Crofty mine

I wonder what the PR campaign by (Canadian-owned) Western Union Mines is up to. The last I heard about the plans for re-opening South Crofty was a BBC report two months ago that some of the sixty current employees (preparing for a restart of mineral extraction) would be made redundant in 2011 without saying why for "legal reasons". In the light of the kerfuffle over the planning applications and the competing plans for re-development of the Camborne-Pool-Redruth area, what's the reason for planting this story in the Daily Mail (and the Telegraph). Trying to convince a bunch of doubtful investors perhaps?